


Rulebook of the Apocalypse

by CherryMountain, OnyxRing



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Basically the world has gone to shit, Bird Bros - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, WIP, code names, no zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 00:27:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5185274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherryMountain/pseuds/CherryMountain, https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnyxRing/pseuds/OnyxRing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the apocalypse. No one is really sure what happened, only that society fell apart, the government was just gone, and the military wasn't regulating anything. All that's left is miles of silence, paranoia, trust issues, bonding, trapped ones, What-you-miss-the-most alphabet game, flour bag babies, each other, and of course the guidelines of how to survive the apocalypse.</p><p>Or the Marvel apocalypse story you probably didn't want but are getting anyways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rulebook of the Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> Another story written with both Cherry and Onyx. This one has been sitting on my laptop since April, and we found it and decided we'd give it a go and see how you guys enjoyed it. We do plan on updating, though the when is still questionable.
> 
> The first chapter is just to see where everyone is at, but not every chapter will have all the characters in it.

“Yo, Hawk, what do you see up there?”

“Dude, I told you to stop calling me that.”

“Why? It’s a sweet code name.”

“We don’t need code names, there’s only the two of us.” Irritated, Clint found himself glancing down through the branches and leaves to where the second man had stopped climbing the tree. “How would you like it if I called you Falcon?”

“Oh, nuh uh man, no. I get to pick the code names. If anything, I’m gonna be Lion.” Sam waved a hand dismissively, and just about lost his balance in the tree. He regained his footing a few seconds later, his arms wrapping around a branch. When he spoke again, it seemed as if he were talking to himself rather than Clint. Almost as if he were reassuring himself. “I’m brave. I’m courageous. Majestic.”

“Majestic my ass.” Clint muttered, just loud enough for his friend to hear him. The blond raised the binoculars back up to his eyes and resumed his scan of the area. Just as the darker skinned man started his rebuttal, Clint froze. “Wait, I see something. One figure, my guess is male. Small, stocky build, looks to be – dammit Sam, this branch is a one man branch! Get off or you’re gonna end up _killing_ us!”

“Ow, don’t hit me!”

“I’ll hit you if I want to! Now get _off_!”

“Gimme the binoculars, man, I just want to see-”

The two men both froze, all thoughts and movements ceasing as they listened to the sound echoing in the distance.

A dog was barking.

* * *

 

_“We’ve been here too long. We should go.”_

“Relax, Steve,” Bucky reassured, not taking his eyes off the area in his limited vision. He was scouting the area in front of his friend from his vantage point on a nearby rooftop, looking for threats. “One more street, second house on the right. After we get this, we’ll head back.”

There was a long pause from Steve’s end. Then, with a sigh in his voice, he replied, “ _Yeah, alright, Buck_.”

Bucky blinked, looking through the scope of his rifle as he continued to search the street below. Where Steve was heading, there would be a few seconds where Bucky couldn’t see him, a small blind spot, but he was still worried for his friend. They’d been together since before the apocalypse, since they were kids, and Bucky didn’t plan on losing Steve now, especially because he wasn’t being careful.

“Alright, be careful around this yellow house,” he told his friend through the walkie, hoping Steve could hear the worry in his voice. Maybe Bucky was overreacting, but it was three seconds of Steve out of sight. Three seconds where anything could happen, and that didn’t sit right with him. It was a blindspot.

He watched Steve nod through the rifle. “ _Copy that_.” Steve lowered his walkie and brought up his pistol as he neared the corner, then, after a pause, took a step into the blind spot.

Bucky held his breath as he shifted his scope an inch to the right, counting the few seconds it took to pass through the houses. But, as the seconds ticked on, his gut clenched in worry. Unless Steve found something and stopped to inspect it, he should have been out in the open by now. He should have been safe, out of the blind spot.

Bucky lifted his walkie while keeping his attention through the scope. “Steve, where you at?” He steadied the rifle, ready to act if necessary. No reply came. “Talk to me, Steve.” When still nothing came, he told himself he would give his friend one last attempt to respond, then he’d start to actually worry.

Before he could, however, he finally got a reply.

But it wasn’t Steve.

“ _Take your hands off the rifle and put ‘em in the air, or you’ll never see your friend again. Alive, anyway.”_

Three seconds was all it took for Steve to slip through his fingers.

* * *

 

Tony had been stuck for what felt like years.

Okay, it had only been a day and a half, but it felt like years. But it was a long day and a half, with barely any sunlight, and half curled in a sitting position. Tony was hungry, hadn’t slept in that whole time, and was pretty sure if he didn’t get out in the next day, he was going to go insane. Let’s just say, Tony wasn’t at his brightest.

“Jarvis, you coward,” Tony mumbled for the gazillionth time in the space where he had been trapped for a day and a half. “Left me the moment things started getting tough. You know, you could have stayed until my dying breath. Pretend to have cared.”

Tony huffed into the air, rolling his eyes at the rock and debris above him. It was a moot point, when there was no one around to see or hear how he had tried to cover his fear and to show that he wasn’t losing it with false irritation.

Only, he _was_ losing it.

It was like Afghanistan all over again. The small space, the dark closing in around him, the power and control out of his hands. Which was the reason for the lack of sleep. The moment he closed his eyes, memories of being behind enemy lines flooded his vision.

He didn’t know how much longer he could make it.

* * *

 

The dog had been barking for quite some time. Thor thought, at first, it would eventually lose interest in whatever it mayhap be doing, but as it continued to hover on the street, he became weary.

Thor had yet to discover what it was barking at from his second story window. The dog was below, standing at the edge of the sidewalk outside the shop windows, scratching at the pavement. He wasn’t sure what it was looking at, but it was definitely facing the shops direction.

But there had been no movement below, nothing to alert the dog’s senses. It had simply run up and begun barking, and it had been doing so for some time now.

Thor checked his watch. A little less than half an hour. No one had come to retrieve it. It should have left by now.

Thor allowed himself to peer out the window again, to see that it had not relented on its barking. Curious, this beast.

Feeling that nothing could go wrong, he stood, setting aside his bag of supplies, and placed his hands on the window. With furrowed brows he began prying it open, which wasn’t difficult at all, and once it was free, it slid up easily. The barking was clearer now that there was no wall between him and the beast, and Thor stuck his head and shoulders out the window to get a better look at the situation.

Except, there was no situation. There was simply a dog barking at an empty shop, and Thor had been cursed to listen to the sound.

The same sound which had suddenly stopped, leaving an eerie silence.

His gaze traveled down to the dog, to find that its head had titled up slightly, and no longer made a sound. Thor searched for what had caused this, but found no change up and down the street. His eyes lingered on the strange beast once more before he retreated his limbs back into the building.

And was once again hit with the sound of barking.

Thor cursed, clenching his fists in anger.

“Blasted-” Thor bit back the rest of his words and stuck his head out the window again to possibly threaten the animal, but once he did, it repeated its antics and stopped barking.

And that was when Thor realized that the dog was barking at him.

It took under ten seconds to slam the window shut, lift his steel baseball bat into his hands, and heft his pack onto his shoulders before he was soaring out of the room and down the stairs. The barking started up again immediately after Thor had closed the window, but it stopped again once Thor saw it through the window of the shop door.

The dog stood unmoving as Thor crept forward, pausing at the door to peer outside once again, but after another long moment, he concluded that there was still nothing out there but the dog. He was still hesitant, however, about the seemingly smart dog staring at him.

It was an Australian Shepherd, Thor noticed immediately. There was a collar around its neck, a layer of dirt covering it and the paws of the animal, as if it had been out doors for a while.

Thor lifted his hand to the doorknob, and the dogs eyes followed the movement, but other than that, it made no other moves than to simply breathe. Thor found this odd; either this was an extremely intelligent dog and was anxiously waiting for Thor, or it was playing innocent so it had the better advantage to attack once Thor opened the door.

The blond found himself mentally kick himself. He’d spent too much time away from civilization if he was thinking that a domestic dog was going to attack him. Unless this all was some trick.

The grip on his bat tightened as he lifted it, prepared when he opened the door. It let out a click, and after another hesitant moment, Thor swung the door open and crouched, ready to swing if the dog did attack.

The wood cracked into the wall, then bounced back slightly, but other than that, Thor nor the dog moved.

The man watched the dog, waiting, but after a moment it was clear the animal was not feral. He took a step to the side, but the dog didn’t react besides blinking its eyes up at him.

Thor lowered the bat an inch, growing curious with what this dog wanted. It wasn’t stepping forward to sniff him, or walking away no longer interested. It was just watching him back.

When Thor lowered the bat completely and straightened, the dogs’ tail wagged once. Nothing came to mind as to what to do, so Thor stepped forward and lifted his hand out to the animal. Batting its’ blue eyes at Thor, it leaned its’ snout forward and sniffed his hand once, gave it a tiny lick, then turned around and stepped out into the street.

Thor found himself frowning. That was all it wanted? To lick him?

He- the dog was definitely male- stopped in the middle of the street and stopped, turning to face Thor, who hadn’t moved from the shop doorway. He let out a low whine, which caused Thor to immediately react and step toward him, thinking the animal wanted to be pet.

When Thor was just within reach, the dog continued across the rest of the street.

Thor halted on the double yellow line, brows furrowing in confusion. “I wished to pet you,” the man said aloud, hoping the dog understood that moving around was not going toward that. He stepped forward again, giving it another try, but the dog simply moved off the street and down the sidewalk.

Thor stopped again, frustration coursing through him. It immediately vanished when the dog looked over his shoulder at Thor and let out a low whine.

It was in that moment that the man realized what was happening. Thor quietly spoke. “Do you intend for me to follow you?”

The dog gave no response but to simply take a few more steps forward. And Thor, taking that as a yes, began to follow who he believed to be his new companion. The dog gave a quiet yip and a soft wag of its tail, which Thor took as a sign that he was doing what the dog wanted.

So he let the dog lead him.

But where?


End file.
